Name
by Sarah the nerd
Summary: The story of the Warden's childhood, and how she became what she was
1. Chocolate

I never seem to do disclaimers, so I ought to get back in the habit, it seems. _Holes _is not mine, it belongs to Louis Sachar, and I thank him for providing such a nifty playground for me to play in. :D 

Author's Note: All my _Holes _fanfics tie into each other...you may have noticed, or not. ;) George, who appears in chapter two, was also in my last fic _Murderers_, and he was in _Innocent _too, although he wasn't named back then. You don't have to have read those fics to understand this, but it helps I suppose. :) 

Author's Warning: Really quite scary. Especially if you don't like the yellow-spotted lizards.   
  
Name   
_1. Chocolate_

Deep in the desert, there lives a girl with no name. 

She lives in a cabin, an old one. It used to be next to the lake, but there isn't any lake anymore. It dried up years and years ago. The girl is staring out of the window. All she can see is sand. Her older sister walks in. She may have had a name at some point. But if she had she's long forgotten it. 

"Father says you should be digging," 

"I don't want to dig. _They _aren't digging." 

"That's because Grandad's dying." 

The girl looks up in horror. "Dying?! They didn't say-I didn't know!" 

"Neither did I until five minutes ago," the older girl says. Her eyes are darker than her sister's, and her face more wretched. "If you want to see him, go to the other cabin. If not, you have to go out and dig." She picks up a spade and goes outside. 

The younger girl follows her through the door. She is very young...although she doesn't know her name she knows her age: twelve years old. She heads for the other cabin, the new one. Her father built it. There used to be several trees here, though they were old and deadening. But they were cut down to build the cabin with. Only two old oaks remain. 

She goes inside. 

Her grandad is lying on the bed. There were only ever two beds, one was for Grandad, the other was for whoever got to it first. Her grandad raises his head feebly as she comes in. 

"You should be digging," he spits. 

"I wanted to see you." 

The girls parents look at her cooly. "If you want your grandad to die happy, go and find him the treasure," her mother says in a dreamlike way. The girl doesn't move. 

"But Grandad..." 

"Go away, girl," he snarls. She doesn't move. "Go! Spoiled brat. Never worked hard enough. You two didn't teach her well," He turns his attention to the two other people watching him. "Or her sister. Lazy, foolish little brats..." 

He stops there and for a minute it looks like he's dead. But then his eyes pop open.   
  
"You find it," he mutters. "and the lake will come back. We're in the right, don't you forget that, Joseph." 

"I won't," the girl's father says. 

The girl doesn't hang around to hear the rest of this. She has no desire to watch someone die. She returns to the first cabin. She can see her sister outside, hacking at the sand with her spade. She seems angry. She isn't angry often. 

There is nothing to do in the cabin, in the desert. It is no place for children. It is no place for anyone. The cabin has a few blankets and pillows on the floor, a pair of turquoise-studded black boots in the corner, a cupboard containing some dirty clothes, some spades hanging up on the wall, and a box. The box is shared between the two sisters. There's not a lot in there. There's a diary, but it doesn't consist of much. _June 1st-Went digging. June 2nd-Went digging. June 3rd-Went digging_. There's a book...a collection of Shakespeare's plays. That was how both girls learnt to read. Their grandmother taught them, before she died. She wasn't a bad teacher. And lastly, there's some paper and pens. None of the pens work. None of them do any writing, anyway. No time. Not when you have to dig every hour of every day, chasing a dream which you don't like under the orders of parents who hate you. 

_We're in the right._

She isn't sure what that means, really. 

She wonders if her grandfather is dead yet. 

She sits in the corner and draws in the dust. The whole place is filthy. There's the odd scorpion, although she's not afraid of them. She isn't afraid of rattlesnakes either. She is afraid of lizards...but they all keep away. 

The family car is outside. It's very old, but it works. Once every month or so her father drives down to the town for food. There's never any money, so she doesn't know how he gets it. Maybe he steals it. It's been three weeks since he last went to town, so they're running low on food. There's a few apples and a can of soup, she knows that much. It won't last long though. There might even be some chocolate, but she knows it's not for her. Her mother is the only one who gets the chocolate. Her father buys it specially for her and smiles as she eats it slowly, savouring every bite. Once she stole a piece of chocolate...a tiny, tiny piece. But she didn't even get to eat it. Her father hit her round the head for it and made her sleep outside. So she opened the car and slept in there. She liked that better. The seats were comfortable. 

She sees her mother outside, and sees her sister ignore her. She walks out of the door. Her mother sits on the dusty ground, her eyes empty, as usual. 

"Is he dead?" the girl asks. 

"Yes," the woman says dreamily. She plays with the sand. "He died painfully, I think." 

The sister, far away, digs her spade into the sand viciously. The others can hear her. 

"We're running out of food," the girl says. 

"I know. You can't have my chocolate." 

"I don't want it." 

The woman stares at her daughter, decides she's telling the truth and takes a small piece of the stuff out of her pocket. It's already melting, and it has sand stuck to it. She throws it a small way away, never taking her eyes off it. 

The girl has seen this done before...ever since she was very young...but it never fails to unnerve her. 

Her mother, the woman with black hair and blue eyes, watches the chocolate melting into the sand, watches it form a small brown pool. A few more seconds, and then it comes. The lizard. The yellow-spotted lizard. 

The girl backs away. She wonders how her mother will react if the lizard bites her. Will she yell? Will she cry? Will she burst out laughing? 

The lizard approaches the chocolate. It doesn't look happy. The girl is standing much too close to it. She is close enough to see it's yellow spots. She knows the danger she is in. She hears her grandmother's voice in her head: _I know what the lizards can do, I've seen it happen. Stay away from them._

There is the smell of smoke and the slamming of doors. The girl can see flames, and she realises her father must be burning the body of her grandfather. And her sister has gone inside. 

The lizard has had it's fill of the chocolate, and is moving. It walks up to the woman, and crawls up her arm. The girl reminds herself again that she's seen her mother do this many times, and the lizard has-obviously-never killed her. But there's a first time for everything. 

The woman coos and pets the lizard, running her finger down it's back. Putting her fingers in it's mouth, even. The lizard doesn't mind. It's under her spell. Anything the woman told the lizard to do, it would do. If it jumped on the girl and bit her, it would be because her mother told it to. 

The girl turns and runs back to the cabin. The door bangs against the wall and leaves a dent. Her sister is sitting on top of the cupboard, purposely not looking out of the window. 

"Is Mother with the lizards again?" she asks. 

The girl nods. The sister sighs. 

It is hot outside. Even hotter now, because the fire is burning. Outside, the woman with dark hair laughs as she lets the lizard go. Her husband is watching the fire with his face blank, barely thinking of his father, because he was nothing but trouble while he was alive. He did this to them. He made all their choices, he destroyed all their lives, because of some strange thing that happened years and years ago, when all this was still a lake and not a wasteland. Some strange thing involving a man who never did anything to anyone, a girl with bright blonde hair who did, and a love and a hate that shouldn't have happened. 

But it's all in the past. 

It is hot outside. 

But inside the cabin, the girl feels freezing cold. 


	2. Night Of The Lizards

Name   
_2._ _Night Of The Lizards_

The town nearest the cabin is called Vulture's Hole. It's little more than a ghost town now. The people there are old and tired. They weren't always. Not all that long ago, they talked about their friends...they talked about a boy who used to often visit the town. They weren't sure of his name, but they remembered his hair...bright red. His father was mad, they said, and lived in a cabin out in the desert, digging holes in the sand for no reason. The boy would buy food from them. Now, the man steals the food instead. 

They let him get away with it. They know him better than he does. The last time they saw him happy was when he married Mercy. She was mad too. She lived in the middle of town, with ordinary parents and an ordinary life. But she was frightening. They said she was a witch. They were probably right. They remembered one night when she went missing. Her parents called the whole town together to find her. They found her in the desert in a lizard nest. But she hadn't been bitten, she wasn't dead. And she hadn't eaten a single onion. There was no reason for them _not _to bite her. Onion Girl they called her, but she didn't like the name. 

They made a strange couple. They went to live with the insane father in the desert. People said they had children, daughters who they were hiding from the world. Often people talked about driving their car out there and seeing for themselves just what was going on. But no-one ever did. 

Until old George went out there. 

The town breeds weirdos, the people there have become accustomed to this by now. It was foolish of George to go there, but he did. And he came back. 

He said they had two girls. One, the oldest, with black hair and tired eyes. And the other with her father's red hair. She was frightened of him. She wanted him to go away. She said her grandfather had said things about people like him.   
  
George planned to tell someone about the girls. He said they couldn't stay there, not with parents like that. He said they made the girls dig, from morning until night, and they told them lies about people and would never let them go. 

It was night. George went to sleep. He remembered the girl with bright blonde hair and what she did. He knew she was dead, although he didn't know how he knew. He remembered the boy the girl was in love with, and what she did because of him. He thought of them, thought of Kate and Sam, and what they started. They defied the cruel rules, they fell in love, they were _supposed _to love each other forever and _change_ all the rules. 

The result? Both dead. Many others dead as well. A family...if they could be called that...living a life made up only of revenge. All trapped in an awful circle that it would take something spectacular to break. 

George shivered, because love had led to this, and there wasn't any turning back. 

That night the lizards came. They killed George, and they killed others too. The lizards were cold and indiscriminating, like Kate had been. They killed many...adults and children, black and white. There was screaming that night, screaming that disturbed the redheaded girl's dreams as she slept in the family car. Parents screamed for their children, friends screamed for friends, and lizard blood covered the town for days. Many people left the morning after, getting into their cars with white faces, clutching onto what they had left. The ones that remain will hardly talk about that night. They might...but only might...mention that those who were there on that night and not dead saw someone in the town, standing on the old gallows with the broken rope, and she was the one who sent the lizards. The witch who wanted to protect her daughters. The girl with the black hair. 

They never saw her again. 

But she's still alive and living in the cabin with her family. She decided a long time ago that she loved her daughters, and she would protect them no matter what the cost. The cost turned out to be the lives of almost an entire town, but she didn't mind, because the townspeople had never been nice to her. They had thought her mad, after all. But _they _were the mad ones. They used to kill and enslave people because they had different colour skin, and they had no answer when she questioned why. 

She does not remember the blonde-haired girl, who didn't have an answer either and threw her life away trying to find one. It is quite odd, though, that she does not remember Kate, because Kate is the one who they are meant to hate so much. Her father-in-law, the girl's grandfather, the mad one, hates her because she rejected him in favour of someone far beneath him. Her husband hates her because she drove his father mad. The girls hate her because she did this to them, she made them dig, she made them slaves. They will never find the treasure, they are not pure of heart enough, someone else, someone better will find it, they are just living out a curse. Unless they choose to take destiny into their own hands, of course. 

They may, or they may not. 

Mercy does not hate Kate Barlow. She finds no good reason to. She sits in the shade and eats chocolate. The girls dig nearby. 

Looking at them, it would be hard to tell they were sisters. One has black hair and the other red, and one has blue eyes and the other green. They don't speak to each other much, either. They certainly never play games or laugh. When their grandmother was alive, she made them laugh sometimes. She would teach them how to catch rattlesnakes and drain the poison out of them, and she would laugh while the snakes shuddered in her hands. But she's dead now. She died when the youngest was just five. 

She told them stories sometimes. Stories about her life at Green Lake. Stories about back when this place was known as heaven on earth and there were parties instead of dust. It went wrong because of Kate, she said. 

When she said that, her husband spoke up: It went wrong because God punished _us_ for what _she_ did. 

Their grandmother, the one who the little girl took after most, shook her dying head at this: It went wrong because God agreed with her and not us, she said. 

And the two girls would listen and they wouldn't understand, and they wouldn't understand when their grandfather would shout and scream filthy swear words at them, and they wouldn't understand when their father started doing the same. 

And when the man came to the door, the tall, dark and frightening man, they didn't understand why he was nice to them, because their grandfather had warned them about _his kind_, and they didn't understand why their mother disappeared in the middle of the night and came back with lizard blood on her. 

The girls keep digging. 

The lizards watch them with yellow eyes, and stay away. 

Because darkness comes in many forms, after all. 


	3. Sir Lizardkiller

Name   
_3. Sir Lizardkiller_

There's another town which isn't far away from Green Lake. This one is different. It's not a ghost town, it's growing. A boy lives there. He has a name, but he loathes it and won't use it. 

He has decided to be a lizard-killer. This is because his family has just gotten back from visiting Vulture's Hole. They have family there, a distant cousin or two. He knows now what happened in Vulture's Hole to make it what it was. And he has decided to kill all the lizards. He found a gun that belonged to his father, and went out to practise on scorpions. But there weren't any. So he started thinking instead. 

Something strange happened while he was in Vulture's Hole. His parents were inside talking to people. He'd gotten bored and gone outside and sat in the sun. He wondered if he should go off and explore. He was about to do just that when he saw someone walking towards him. It was a girl with dirty red hair and clothes that were too small for her. She was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. She saw him watching her, and he wondered suddenly if she was going to curse him somehow. She looked capable of it. 

But she walked right up to him. 

"I need somewhere to hide," she said matter-of-factly. 

"Why?" 

Then he noticed: she was carrying a bag and it was loaded with food: apples, cans, bread. No chocolate though, he noticed. Pity. He loved chocolate. 

"Did you steal all that?" he asked in awe. 

She nodded. 

"So you must be hiding from the people you stole from, right? Well, I'll find you a hiding place, you come with me." 

"I'm not hiding from them, I'm hiding from my father," she said quietly, and looked at him as if he was stupid. But he didn't mind. 

"Why?" 

"Because I wasn't supposed to come with him, but I didn't want to dig, so I hid in the back of the car, and so he wouldn't get angry I stole food for him, but he got angry anyway." 

His mind spun. 

"Don't you have money?" It was the first thing that came into his head. 

"I will have someday." 

His parents would come out soon and they'd want to know who this girl was. "Come with me. I'll see if I can find somewhere." 

And he took her hand. She tried to wrench it away but he wouldn't let her. They hurried through deserted street after deserted street. Past an inn called the _Dead Fish_. 

"Maybe in there." he said thoughtfully. 

They both went inside. The bartender barely gave them a second glance. They hid under a table, the tablecloth covering them up. 

They looked at each other. 

"So what's your name?" the girl demanded. 

"I'm not telling," he said, blushing slightly. "It's a stupid name." 

"Well, I don't have one." 

"Really?" 

She nodded. And then she attempted to ignore him, which was difficult when you considered that they were hiding together under a very small table. 

She broke the silence first, though. 

"It's _stupid _to have a name and not want it," she said accusingly. 

He shrugged. "You can call me something else. A nickname. Just not my real name." 

"Like what?" the girl asked. 

He thought. "Anything will do. _Sir Lizardkiller_," he said with a grin. "Did you hear about what happened here? All that time ago?" 

And she gave him a look that chilled his bones. A look that said she knew perfectly well, and that she knew more than he did, and that whatever had happened had been a good thing. 

He didn't look at her after that. His parents must be worried. They were probably looking for him right now. In fact, he could hear footsteps. It was probably them. They'd find this girl here as well. What would they do about her? His mother might even suggest they take her home and look after her... 

The footsteps came closer. 

And the tablecloth was whipped off the table, and he found himself staring up at a face. A man with red hair and crazy eyes. This was her father. And suddenly he felt like he wanted to be anywhere else, anywhere, just as long as he didn't have to face this man. 

But the man had no interest in him. He pulled the girl to her feet instead. 

"Found you," he hissed. 

And the boy who didn't want his name suddenly leapt to his feet. 

"Wait a minute...you can't..." 

But a fist flew out of nowhere, and suddenly he was on the ground, seeing stars before his eyes. He struggled to his feet, ready to fight, or yell, or something. But the girl was being dragged away, though. She looked back at him. 

"Thank you, Sir Lizardkiller," she said with a sigh. 

And then she was gone. 

The boy finds a scorpion, but can't quite bring himself to shoot it. He gives up and goes inside. 

He can't help wondering if he'll see that girl again. There was-is-something odd about her. Something terrifying. Something that went even beyond the look in her father's eyes and the bruise on his face. 

He puts the gun away. For now. 

Far away, in her cabin, the girl sleeps. Her sister lies awake. She wishes she wasn't here. She doesn't know of any place, but she knows there must be _something_. She envies her little sister. She got out, and even if she got beaten for it, well, it was still freedom, sort of... 

Except of course it isn't now. 

She can't sleep at all. When morning comes she goes out to dig, and falls asleep in the hole. Her father wakes her up, laughing at her, saying that the hole will be her grave if she goes to sleep in it again. 

Words do not frighten her anymore. 

They don't frighten her sister, the redhead, either. She will use them to her advantage one day, she thinks. 

The sun beats down. 


	4. Moonlight

Name   
_4. Moonlight_

One day, a day not much more hot than all the other days of the year, the girl dares to ask her father what her name is. Because she is thirteen now...it is her birthday...and she feels, somewhere inside her, as if she has a right to know. Her father throws dirt at her and does not answer. 

Mercy remembers that today is her daughter's birthday, however. There is some chocolate left over from the last steal, but she can't bring herself to give it away, mostly because in the back of her mind she feels that the lizards won't like it. In her head, though, she gives her daughter all the presents she would like. A car of her own. Clothes that aren't dirty. A world that she has control over. Power. 

The sister watches wearily. She would like to know her name, as well. She's sure she has one. She's wondered many times about what it is. She doesn't feel right without one. 

She has never once in her life felt right. 

The family eat together. It is the only thing they ever do as a family, and they don't much like it. They eat under one of the oak trees. The girl looks up and dreams of climbing it. Supper is dry sandwiches. They eat them because it's all they have. Night starts to fall. The girl does not mention again that it's her birthday, but for some reason her father is smiling. 

"I know what your names are," he says, looking at these two girls who are his daughters. They stare. They have waited for this all their lives. A cold wind blows. There is no light, but their eyes are used to the dark. Like their mother, they're creatures of the night. 

"You know about Sam," he tells them. They nod. They have heard too much about this villain. About how he stole Kate away from their grandfather, was killed and his ghost cursed the town and walks it at night. _They _are the town now, though, and they've never seen him. They've heard about his onions, which protected the town against lizards but were poison really, and about the boat and about the donkey. 

"The donkey was named Mary Lou. My father told me," he says. "Those are your names. Your name is Mary-" he points to the black-haired girl, who nods, a strange expression on her face, fear and disgust and anger... "-and your name is Lou. You're named for the flea-ridden pet of a filthy bastard-and it's all you deserve!" 

He walks away from them. The girl-_Lou_-sees the holes in the moonlight. They've destroyed the earth, she thinks. _We _have. But nothing like that matters anymore...I have a name. No matter who or what I'm named after...I _exist_. 

But her sister-_Mary_-gets up and walks away. She goes to the cabin and shuts the door. Slams it. The sounds echoes across the whole wide wasteland, and her father laughs and laughs and laughs. 

He is still laughing next morning when Lou wakes up. But she is happy. She will dig, she will be hit, she'll do anything, because at least she has a name now. Her sister stays hidden under the blankets. With their grandfather dead, the other cabin is free. That's where Joseph and Mercy sleep now. Joseph is outside now though, digging and laughing. 

Lou goes outside to help. Today will be the day, she thinks. I'll find the treasure. 

She does not think about what will happen _after _that, because the truth is that nothing will. 

She digs all day and all evening. When she returns to her cabin, she sees her sister kneeling by the box and rummaging through it. She looks up when she sees Lou. 

"I'm leaving," she says quietly. 

Lou is suddenly terrified for reasons she doesn't know. "Why?" 

"Because I can't stay here, I can't stay here with him. I'll hear him laughing until the day I die, and I don't want that. You've got to come with me." 

"But I'm going to find the treasure." 

"There is no treasure! It's a lie! It's because they hate someone, someone who's _dead_! Someone who's been dead for years and years and years! You can't stay here and just...and just let the hate go on forever!" 

She says this very fast. Lou stares at her. 

"But I have my name now, and you have yours..." 

"But I _don't want it_. I'm going to get out of here and I'm going to change my name, and you've got to come too." 

"I can't." And she doesn't know why. 

"Well, what about Mother?" Mary says desperately. "She has to come. She's not right. Grandma said so. She said she wasn't really a witch at all, that she was just...just ill or something..." 

"What about the lizards?" Lou demands. "She did something to the lizards. They obey her. If you take her away the lizards will kill people." 

"They won't! They're just animals, _we're _more dangerous. Please...Lou. You have to come with me." 

But Lou shakes her head. 

Mary runs out of the cabin in tears. She sees the holes that stretch out as far as the eye can see. We've destroyed the earth, she thinks. And for what? For nothing. 

She knows in the back of her mind that she'll have to leave her mother here, and that her sister won't come with her either. Her stupid stupid stupid sister who she doesn't know and never will. 

She gets in the car. The keys are in there. Why has no-one done this before? It seems too easy. If she can escape without driving the car into a hole, that is. 

Mercy comes out of the cabin. Her eyes are gleaming. Maybe they're gleaming with tears...who can tell? She runs to the car. 

"Mum," Mary says in relief. "Get in the car. Please. Lou won't come with me, but we can come back for her. Please." 

But Mercy just stands looking at her, and playing with the chocolate in her pocket. How can this girl think of leaving her, when she has killed and destroyed lives just to keep her? Mary stares at her pleadingly. Mercy stares back and takes her hand out of her pocket. The chocolate has melted over her fingers; it looks as though she has brown blood. 

"Please," Mary says. 

But she won't. She can't. She has to stay here with the lizards and the man who gives her chocolate and the remaining daughter. She has to stay where she belongs. 

With a sob Mary turns the key and the car starts. She has never driven before. She is scared out of her mind. As each second passes she expects to hear a sickening crunch as the car falls down a hole. But it doesn't. Maybe her mother is doing this with magic, maybe she's letting her escape. 

The car leaves a trail of dust behind it. Mary sticks her head out of the window. She can see a strange rock formation...it's shaped like a thumb. It chills her for some reason. It's too hot inside the car. 

But she is free, free, free. Burning up but free. 

Lou watches the car. The heat is blurring it. Her stupid sister. They're going to _find _the treasure, and now Mary won't get even a coin. But they're down one digger now, though. Her father will be furious. 

She hears his string of swear words. He's yelling at the disappearing car, cursing his daughter, cursing them all. Mercy says nothing. The lizards stir in their homes beneath the earth. 

Finally Joseph Walker runs out of things to shout. The car has long since disppeared. He turns to the remaining daughter, the one who looks like him. 

"You'll do her work too. I expect there to be as many holes today as there are always." 

Lou nods. She brushes her red hair from her face. She goes into the cabin to find a spade and she starts digging. 


	5. Half Life

Name   
_5. Half Life_

The next day, Mercy Walker kills her husband. Their youngest daughter does not see it. She simply wakes up in the morning and goes to dig. Her parents are just still sleeping, she thinks, but if the treasure is going to be found they all must work harder. She goes to their cabin to wake them up. 

But her father is dead. No magic was involved. Mercy is holding a knife, the only knife the family owns. She is not laughing. She drops the knife and it clatters to the wooden floor. 

Lou is horrified. She turns her head away from this awful scene and throws up. She knows why this has happened. Her mother wanted to protect her remaining daughter, and has done it. Nothing will hurt her now. 

She is sick again. Then she walks slowly to the cabin and hides in the blankets. It is afternoon when she dares to come out. Her father is gone, but there are plenty of graves to choose from, after all. 

Her mother does not eat anything. Normally she eats chocolate. But today she doesn't. She is silent. Lou stays away from her. She ought to have followed her sister after all. There is nothing for her here. 

The world is dead. 

Mercy laughs. She takes an onion from the table and gives it to Lou. Lou doesn't want it. 

"Eat it," her mother says. "Or..." 

But there is no _or_. Lou eats it. She wonders where her sister is now. She does no more digging for a while. Only when evening comes does she pick up her spade and dig it into the ground. Pile after pile of sand. Mountains. She knows she's not likely to find anything. 

But she does. 

A glowing golden tube. She picks it up. It's one half of a lipstick tube. Just one half. She doesn't care where the other half is. She's elated, even though her father is dead and her sister gone. This is the proof that the treasure is here. This is the proof that they're in the right. They _are_. 

Whatever on earth that means. 

She thinks of going to tell her mother, but she doesn't know what she'll say. So she keeps the lipstick tube, and goes to sleep with it in her hand. 

That night the lizards come back for Mercy Walker. She figured they would. She's broken all the spells now. She's used the lizards for evil unimaginable and they don't like it. They go for her. But they leave the girl alone, they can smell onions on her. 

When Lou wakes up she knows something is wrong. She goes to the other cabin. Her mother the witch is there, sitting on the floor, unable to control the lizards anymore. 

Lou gasps and backs away. 

Mercy looks at her thoughtfully. She watches the biggest lizard creep towards her. She gives a smile. 

"Lou is a nice name," she says. 

The lizard leaps at her and Lou turns away from the door. There is no screaming whatsoever. The lizards hurry out and ignore her. Something breaks inside her, breaks even more than it was meant to. She's all alone now. 

She goes to the cupboard and takes out a freshly wrapped chocolate bar. She goes outside and unwraps it and puts a piece in her mouth. She chews and chews and hates the taste. But she swallows it. Then she throws the rest away. 

She thinks she might be sick again, but she isn't. 

She goes to the cabin. She takes the turquoise-studded boots and puts them on. She knows who they belonged to once...her grandmother told her. She takes all the food and water that she can find. 

And she starts walking. 

She walks for days. She tries to save the water and not drink it all at once but it proves difficult. She took enough onions to keep the lizards away from her, but she's still afraid. 

After almost five days have passed, she sees someone walking towards her. A man. He looks quite young. He has dark skin and he's leading a donkey and she has a feeling she knows who he is. She runs away from him. 

She knows he was just a ghost. She imagines he's looking for Kate. She wonders if he'll find her, and hopes _not _with all her heart. 

Two days later and she arrives at the town where she met Sir Lizardkiller. Vulture's Hole. Sir Lizardkiller isn't here, but a few people are. Most of them are leaving, they've had enough of living as ghosts. But they find her. And they take her to the next town, and they look after her. They send her to hospital and give her water. She doesn't tell them her story...not all of it, anyway. She simply says that she ran away and that her parents are dead. 

There is much discussion about what to do with her. They give her to a foster family, but she's not happy there. They send her to boarding school, but she hates it. She goes from unlived life to unlived life. 

And then she is an adult, and she looks at the lipstick tube which she kept in her pocket, and she laughs. 

For the treasure will be hers. 

Because she was the one in the right. 


	6. Epilogue

Name   
_Epilogue___

The boys here at Camp Green Lake don't have names either. But this is different. Like Sir Lizardkiller, so long ago, _she _had not had to do anything...the names were not wanted. They were thrown away and replaced. 

It's stupid to have a name and not want it. 

Incidentally, Sir Lizardkiller was here too. She'd thought he was stupid too, and she was right, but she kept him around anyway. Except with the Lizardkiller part of his name taken away, of course. 

Ms. Lou Walker mixes her nail polish. She adds her secret ingredient. The other adults here thought she was mad when she went chasing rattlesnakes for their poison, but she didn't care. 

The nail polish glows red as blood. She tips it into a bottle and puts it on a shelf. 

Her childhood home had been rebuilt. There was a hammock between the two trees now. Her hammock. There were a few few buildings and more cars. 

And far, far more holes. 

If she listened hard, she'd be able to hear the boys out on the dried-up lake. They didn't know what they were looking for, they didn't know they were helping right a wrong commited years ago. They just thought they were being punished. 

Well, that as well. 

She watched them sometimes, just to see what they knew. They didn't know a thing. They didn't know what this place used to be, they didn't know that a man had a knife stuck in him and a woman was killed by lizards in the very place that they now used as a wreck room. 

They didn't see the ghosts either. 

She did. She saw her grandfather...Charles Walker, the man who once _owned _this place...her father and her mother. Sometimes Sam. In fact, she saw him all the time. And she knew he was giving her a warning: You weren't in the right, you never were. You don't understand. Your parents destroyed you. 

She never saw her sister, so she could only assume that she was still alive. But she didn't want to find her. She didn't care. 

The half-of-lipstick tube was in a drawer. She looked at it sometimes. But deep in her heart she wondered. Wondered if Sam was right after all. 

She turns to face the window. All she can see is sand. Not the people. Not the buildings. Just the sand. 

The bus pulls up outside. Out of it steps a boy with all the curses of the past in his hands. 

And she doesn't see him, either.   
  


THE END 


End file.
